News 3/19/10

From Ex-Cerner Guy: “Re: CPSI. I prospected heavily in Mid-Atlantic and Mid-West regions, and can vouch for the need for a CPSI or Intra-Nexus. Quite a few Meditech sites were looking around and they were only getting called back by the McK Paragon types. There is definitely a market and some pent-up demand.”

From Dan D: “Re: Tom Skelton. He has left MED3OOO for another opportunity.” Unverified.

From RJ McMurphy: “Re: putting HIMSS in perspective. Vendors representing half of the hospital HIS/EMR systems in America weren’t even present! If you look at the HIMSS Analytics report in Modern Healthcare for Jan. 2009, you’ll see Meditech with 26.7% market share, Cerner with 12.6, and Siemens with 9.5. That adds up to 48.7%. All three chose to opt out of HIMSS. Basically it’s become a hype circus — no buying influence really happens there. It was more important earlier in the market cycle when PowerPoint was the main operating system for EMR vendors. Now almost all buying is done by peer site reference and Internet data gathering. Organizations like HIMSS, KLAS, Gartner are trying to make themselves more relevant with lots of hype about trends, etc. The world has changed and I laud those three for opting out and saving their shareholders and stakeholders the cash!”

From Doug Dinsdale: “Re: Merge. Dr. Dalai challenges the CEO of Merge to explain why the purchase of Amicas isn’t going to ruin both companies.”

Cerner makes the S&P 500.

A reader sends this picture of a billboard one of his patients asked him about.

Haemonetics extends its $60 million offer for GlobalMed Technologies to give that company time to settle a shareholder lawsuit seeking to block the acquisition.

Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (FL) chooses Allscripts PM/EHR for its 106 providers and 33 family medicine residents.

Singapore General Hospital wins the Microsoft HUG 2010 Innovation Award for “Best Use of Clinical Records – Inpatient” for its use of Eclipsys Sunrise Patient Flow, which improved bed placement time and reduced overhead.

A Weird News Andy find: a former dentist is accused of using paper clips instead of stainless steel posts inside the teeth of root canal patients, about which WNA says, “Maybe it’s for all those people who use paper to floss.”

More information on the HIMSS EHRA position on meaningful use is here.

McKesson announces a hosted storage option for Horizon Cardiology CVIS, with Cooper University Hospital (NJ) as an early adopter.

Software developed by Boston Medical Center, Northeastern University, and MIT that reduced readmissions by 30% is licensed for commercialization to Engineered Care Inc.

A new iPhone app called iResus walks users through emergency resuscitation, providing a metronome for timing chest compressions.

Nurse scheduling software vendor StaffKnex changes its name to OnShift. They apparently like conjoined words quite a bit.

Everything about this story is sad. A four-month-old Down’s baby dies in the UK after being given a tenfold overdose of the diuretic furosemide. The computerized warning issued to the doctor’s office is overridden by the receptionist. The pharmacist hears the technician questioning the dose with the prescriber, but doesn’t follow up. The neighbors of the parents, convinced they killed their own child, trash their house and steal all the baby’s belongings. Weeks later, the father kills himself by drug overdose. The coroner’s report finally came out this week, four years later, finding that the doctor and pharmacist were at fault.

Revenue cycle vendor Emdeon will acquire management consulting firm Healthcare Technology Management Services for $11 million.

At least somebody likes the proposed meaningful use criteria: AARP and Consumers Union.

Lexi-Comp releases its ON-HAND medical software for the Palm Pre and Pixi.

A KLAS report finds that 20% of smart pump buyers wouldn’t choose their current pump again, although 99% of CareFusion Alaris said they would. Still, the highest rated pump was the B. Braun Outlook.

Meridian Health (NJ) chooses CareAlign from Informatics Corporation of America to deliver an integrated clinical record to five hospitals.

MedFusion licenses LIS, molecular diagnostics, and AP software from Sunquest.

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